43,000 plastic bags later, students get lesson on environment

Kennydale Elementary School fourth-graders Mallory Dickman and Naomi Tandal toss some of the bags collected by classmates onto a pile during a school assembly. (Joshua Trujillo, Seattlepi.com)

When Kennydale Elementary School Principal Bill Tarter told an assembly of students Tuesday morning that 20 plastic bags were found in the stomach of a gray whale that died on a Seattle beach last week the students took in a collective breath.

Hearing how their trash can affect the natural world shocked the students.

The Kennydale students were gathered as part of a competition to see which grade could collect the most plastic bags in one month. These are bags that could end up in landfills, blow down streets or find their way to Puget Sound.

Project manager Patti Southard said it is easier to process the clean bags dropped off by the public than sorting bags dropped in residential recycle bins.

Southard, with King County’s Recycling And Environmental Services Division, said if all recyclable plastic film is factored in that the equivalent of 8.2 billion plastic bags end up in King County landfills every year. “And this is a place where we do a good job with recycling,” she said.

The third-graders at Kennydale cheered and smiled when it was announced that their total collection of 12,830 plastic bags won them a pizza party.

The entire student body collected more than 43,000 bags. A small dent in that 8.2 billion figure but still a beginning.